New Delhi, Aug. 23 -- The Supreme Court on Saturday set aside an order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) directing Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living Foundation (AOL) to pay Rs.5 crore in environmental compensation for restoring the Yamuna floodplains, where the World Culture Festival was held in 2016. The court pulled up the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) for granting permission to hold such an event on the ecologically sensitive Yamuna floodplains and directed the landowning agency to refund the Rs.5 crore within four weeks. Finding serious flaws in the reasoning and conclusion of the NGT's December 7, 2017 judgment, in a challenge by AOL's legal entity Vyakti Vikas Kendra, India, the top court said that the tribunal "burdened" AOL with the task of developing the floodplain that it "never destroyed". The judgment, by a bench of justices Satish Chandra Sharma and N Kotiswar Singh, read, "The Tribunal completely altered the character of the dispute before itself and converted it into a proceeding for fresh development of Yamuna floodplain, and in doing so, it burdened the appellant to bear the expenses of such activity. Effectively, the Tribunal burdened the appellant with developing something it never destroyed." The event was organised on 25 hectares of the floodplains, upstream of the DND Flyway, from March 11 to 13, 2016. While permitting DDA to continue with the rehabilitation of the floodplain as ordered by the NGT from time to time, the bench held, "The manner in which permission was granted by DDA to hold the event on an active floodplain cannot be approved. It was not only avoidable, but also not consistent with the precautionary principle and doctrine of public trust." However, it refrained from passing an order as grant of permission was not under challenge....